Meet AJ

I started writing as a way to expose any historical or current traumatic scars that have built up uncomfortable callouses over my challenging life time. I lost my mum before I had a chance to admire her and tell he she was precious to me, or hear her say she loved me.  Feeling orphaned and alone, I sought comfort in a rushed marriage, resulting in fourteen ugly years of abuse and four beautifully innocent children.

After a dynamic escape from our violent home, I hid from healing healing through reckless associations and excessive drinking.  My heart has been crushed by broken relationships with some of my children.  Somehow, I became a second ‘wifer’ and mom of a complicated blended family, parenting a fifth child not FROM me, but FOR me.  I have survived, and still manage, depression episodes that shut off the world without my permission.

All these scars, old or new, managed or mismanaged, are stiffening my heart muscle.  My hope was to emerge unscathed by these major hurts, so I continued to hide the things that were broken.  Appreciating the lessons learned, the wisdom gained, and the character built through all these experiences, was not enough to stop these emotional scars from a tightening grip on my ability to love – to laugh – to flex with a dynamic, changing life.

Perhaps I will never lose the scars.  It is my goal to open them up, give them a chance to bleed out their worst, and gently love them back to being just a faded marker from a struggle-filled, but HOPEFUL life.